Chef was 'duped' into relocating at hotel

Dressed in smart blue suit, crisp white shirt and blue and off-white polka dot tie, the tanned former wonderboy of the Celtic Tiger breezed up the courtroom steps seemingly anxious to get on with the business of the day.

Mr Richard Kean SC, said his client, "Conrad Gallagher, the Donegal chef" had been duped into relocating Peacock Alley into the Fitzwilliam Hotel on the promise of 90 per cent occupancy rates by a hotel management "desperate to secure his talents".

When the occupancy rates proved as elusive as the paintings would later become, Mr Gallagher's business went belly-up and he "left with a bag under his arm" and with not a bob to his name.

This contrasted starkly with the "astute" Mr Holland, who held 49 company directorships and had access to a "casserole of characters" including teams of accountants, lawyers and advisers. Mr Gallagher had been hopelessly naïve. He was a master in the kitchen, more comfortable with pots and pans than business plans.

Mr Holland was having none of it. Sure, he said, there was no doubting "Conrad's" talents. But when Peacock Alley was relocated to his hotel from South William St in 1998 it was already insolvent.

In July 1999 Mr Gallagher's financial position had become so precarious he approached Ampleforth with a plan to sell them some of his paintings which he had hung in Peacock Alley. Most of the paintings were by Irish artist Phelim Egan.

A contract was drawn up, along with an itinerary of the paintings, and a price of £20,000 (€25,395) was agreed. The paintings would stay where they were but ownership would pass from Mr Gallagher to Ampleforth.

Months later, in November 1999, the hotel management noticed that three of the paintings were missing. At first Mr Gallagher explained he had sent them to an art gallery in Dún Laoghaire to have security catches fitted and repairs carried out. He later changed tack. "Conrad said some thugs to whom he owed money had in fact come in and taken the paintings," Mr Holland told the court. "He said they were the type who would break legs". He added he did not believe Mr Gallagher's "second story", and called the gardaí.

In the sale contract, mention is made of "16 paintings" which hung in Peacock Alley. The itinerary confusingly numbered, as 1-3, three works which hung in Christopher's Brasserie, and numbered as 1-16 the 16 works in Peacock Alley.

Mr Kean said the sale agreement covered the 16 paintings in Peacock Alley only and not the other three, which Mr Gallagher later sold to art dealer Mr Thomas P. Adams.

In the sale contract and in Mr Holland's original statement to gardaí, he refers to 16 paintings, not 19. And as everybody knows, Mr Kean contended, 16 always means 16, never 19.